Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI may not reach a courtroom for years. It is already doing damage.
When Apple sued OpenAI on Friday for stealing hardware trade secrets, the attention went to the lurid detail. There were “show and tell” interviews and an engineer who kept his work laptop.
One even texted a colleague: “LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage]”. The more consequential story is quieter. The suit itself, long before any verdict, threatens to slow the company working hardest to build a rival to the iPhone.
The damage starts now
That is the argument Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman laid out this week, and it is hard to dispute. A trade-secret fight forces new legal reviews, tighter internal controls, and hours of depositions and discovery that pull engineers away from building. Former Apple staff at OpenAI may go quiet about their old work, and managers may steer around whole lines of questioning.
